One week from today, I’ll be seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Time for me to put aside the heavier viewing fare and relive the joys of being a wide-eyed teenager.

In my opinion, Raiders of the Lost Ark is the finest adventure film ever made. Anne and I watched it again last night, and it’s amazing how well that movie holds up. There are so many things Spielberg did right in that movie, things he seemed to forget in later cliffhanger-movie attempts. John Williams never composed a more effective film score. Indiana Jones never had a better sidekick, or a better girlfriend, or a more interesting nemesis. I don’t expect Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to come anywhere close to such genius, but I’m hopeful that it will be better than Lost Ark’s two flawed sequels, one of which was too grim and gruesome, the other a little too goofy.

Here, and here, Jeffrey Wells has been pondering an interesting story — Indiana Jones and the Generation Gap. I have a hard time imagining watching Raiders and writing it off as just another 80s popcorn flick. But apparently, those of us who grew up with Indiana Jones have a different appreciation for him than young moviegoers discovering him today.

Are you looking forward to the movie? Let me know. Answer any or all of these questions.

• When did you first encounter Indiana Jones?
• Which film of the trilogy is your favorite (and why)?
• Is Indiana just another big-screen action hero? Or is there something that sets him apart?
• What lessons would you like to see Jones learn in the fourth film?
• If this was to be the final Indiana Jones film, how would you like to see it end?

The Hollywood Reporter has what appears to be the first full review of Prince Caspian.

Michael Rechtshaffen calls it:

…a worthy if somewhat less wondrous successor to that 2005 phenomenon.

Several shades darker in tone than the previous edition — which, to be fair, didn’t carry the burden of expectation that a sequel must bear — the return to Narnia still casts a transporting spell that should nicely build on that $745 million worldwide foundation.

UPDATE: It appears that Emmanuel Levy has rushed his review as well.

It’s a sunny day, made even sunnier by the news that Auralia’s Colors has been nominated for the Clive Staples Award.

Many thanks to Rebecca LuElla Miller for kicking this off. I’m honored to see Auralia’s Colors included in anything associated with the famous “C.S.”

(Stay tuned. I’m looking for more information on the award. So far, I’ve only found this. Who’s on the jury?)

This is collection of reviews that I found interesting and helpful. The collection will be revised as I find more notable assessments online. Feel free to submit more reviews, or even your own, in the comments below.

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UNSETTLED

Chattaway:

Unsettled does not offer a complete picture of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, nor does it pretend to. What it does do is open a window into an aspect of that situation that might not have occurred to many of us. And while it offers no easy answers, it raises all sorts of messy but important questions—and it does so by immersing the viewer in the personal experiences of others in a most compassionate way.

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THE FALL

Morehead:

Throughout the film, I felt like Tarsem was trying to get my attention, to get me to notice this really alluring costume, or the angle at which he shot this stunning castle wall, or how he was able to seamlessly transition from the shot of a pinned butterfly to a deserted butterfly-shaped island. Simply put, The Fall ends up drowning in its own excesses, constantly trying way too hard to wow the viewer and sweep them off into an imaginative, whimsical tale of heroes, bandits, and princesses in such an obvious manner that it ends up feeling rather ingratiating.

Dollar:

For all his epic pretense, rock-video veteran Singh (“Losing My Religion”) devotes far more energy to settings and costumes than his putative subject (storytelling). It’s a draggy pastiche of Alejandro Jodoworsky’s Holy Mountain and One Thousand and One Nights.

Fibbs:

The Fall is wholly beguiling, an utterly transportive piece of filmmaking as dazzling in its visual audacity as it is in its spartan simplicity. … And it’s the best thing I’ve seen all year.

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SURFWISE

McCracken:

Surfwise … does what a documentary should do: it investigates a specific curiosity of existence (in this case, a very curious family) and attempts to understand it. When so many documentaries today seem concerned only with arguing a point, it’s nice to see something like this which seeks only to reveal.

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SPEED RACER

Davis:

But it’s hard to fill two hours when your best ideas only last a few seconds apiece, and the shortfall of ingenuity causes the worst possible result: boredom. Cranking the volume up to 11 works until its merely numbing, and even the few quiet moments—like a scene in the snowy mountains—seem loaded and cocked and ready to whoosh. … At 20 minutes, Speed Racer might have been a retro-futuristic hoot, but at 129 it requires five times too much hooting. It’s a sugar cereal served for six meals straight. Enough, Speed Racer, enough.

Suderman:

It’s loud, it’s gaudy, it’s obnoxious — the film seems to demand that the audience watch rather than entice it to do so. The arcade sensibility evokes Daytona by way of Fremont Street in Las Vegas, or perhaps Hot Wheels as overhauled by Willy Wonka. Every frame is so juiced, so aggressively charged with unnecessary zip and zoom, that I felt more assaulted than entertained. … Most who attend this film are likely to come out poorer for the experience.

Fibbs:

When Speed Racer works, it is like nothing you have ever seen. And when it careens off the track, cartwheels end over end through the air and disintegrates upon impact with the hard, unforgiving earth, it is still like nothing you have ever seen. I’m not saying I liked the film, but I have to revere its outlandish audacity.

Breimeier:

.. a flashy mess that proves some things are better left to nostalgia than adaptation.

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WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS

Fibbs:

… a clever concept lamely executed. This could have been an enjoyable, smart story in the hands of far better filmmakers. One can imagine a classier version with the likes of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Instead, what we get is a clumsy, frustratingly predictable film full of recycled sidekicks and clearly overcooked jokes.

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THE BABYSITTERS:

Petrusich:

The Babysitters glosses over the trauma and emotional manipulation inherent to what is, essentially, a child-prostitution ring—which would be unforgivable enough if the film didn’t also falter so badly on plot. … [It's] a dangerously glib and simplistic take on sexual exploitation, which, unfortunately, is never as mutual as Ross would like us to believe.

The Browser: News and links to lift your eyebrows and furrow your forehead

The Evangelical Manifesto

On the remote chance that you may not already have read it, I should post the news that An Evangelical Manifesto was published and presented earlier this week, on May 7.

The Steering Committee for the document includes…

• Timothy George
  Dean, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University
• Os Guinness
  Author/Social Critic
• John Huffman
  Pastor, St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, CA
  Chair, Christianity Today International
• Rich Mouw
  President, Fuller Theological Seminary
• Jesse Miranda
  Founder & Director, Miranda Center for Hispanic Leadership, Vanguard University
• David Neff
  Vice President and Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Media Group
• Richard Ohman
  Businessman
• Larry Ross
  President, A. Larry Ross Communications
• Dallas Willard
• Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California
  Author

And, via Ross Douthat, here are responses to it by:

Alan Jacobs (here, and here) and Michael Brendan Dougherty. Other responses will be posted here as fast as I become aware of them. (Well, almost as fast.)

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Two Soderberghs and a missing Kiarostami: early rumblings about Cannes 08

I’m two weeks behind on posting this, but it’s too tantalizing to ignore. Here’s Robert Koehler musing about the lineup for this year’s Cannes Film Festival…

Just look at some of the filmmakers in the roster, and you’re looking at a window on the future of cinema: Alonso and his Thierry del Fuego-set Liverpool, Albert Serra and his Three Wise Men odyssey El Cant dels ocells, Claire Simon’s Les Bureaux de Dieu, Raya Martin and his five-hour Now Showing and the best Romanian you haven’t heard of–Radu (The Paper Will Be Blue) Muntean and Boogie.

He concludes with:

…a mystery: Although Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin was expanded into a feature based on the short he contributed to Cannes’ Chacun son cinema and Kiarostami, is, well, Kiarostami, he’s nowhere to be found in the lineup. Any lineup. Why isn’t it in Cannes? What happened?

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The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers

Word is spreading fast about the next book by “God Girl” Cathleen Falsani, religion columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times. The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers will be a welcome focus on the quiet but everpresent spiritual questions at the core of the Coens’ films.

I met Cathleen Falsani, the author, at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing a couple of weeks ago, and it was a pleasant surprise. I’ve been reading her work here and there for years. (I think I discovered her through Steve Beard’s Thunderstruck site.) She approached me after my Through a Screen Darkly lecture to tell me that she was glad I’d brought up No Country for Old Men in the presentation, and went on to tell me about the book. It sounds very cool, but she’s got another one coming out right now called Sin Boldly that looks interesting too. Can’t wait to read either one of them.

So, learn to make a White Russian, and you’ll be all set. When the book arrives, you can kick back every evening with a glass in one hand and Falsani’s book in the other, and learn to see the Coen Brothers through a new lens. (I wonder if the book will include Burn Before Reading, or if the printing will happen too late for that….)

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Neil Young versus the MP3

Ready for Harvest Moon on Blu-ray?

When Neil Young announced the impending release of his Archives on Blu-ray Disc earlier this week, he made it clear that there was a technical reason for his decision.

As well as making his entire back catalogue and a large amount of related items available in one collection of shiny discs, he was striking a blow against the MP3. “Putting on a headphone and listening to an MP3 is like hell,” he said. His aim is to give the audience “quality whether they want it or not. You can degrade it as much as you want, we just don’t want our name on it”.

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A hero will rise… to save the state of book reviewing

As book reviewers vanish from newspapers, will anyone stand up and offer a solution? Here’s a story of one controversial attempt.

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Marion’s mandibles

I don’t know about you, but are you getting unsettled by Karen Allen’s perpetual, ear-to-ear grin in the promotional shots for Indy 4? It’s kind of creeping me out. I hope Marion Ravenwood’s return to the Indy world will remind us of the tough-talking, punch-throwing dream girl who won our hearts in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Marion gone soft and smiley? Say it isn’t so!

The video for Radiohead’s “All I Need.”

Beautiful.

WATCH THE WHOLE THING. You probably haven’t seen a better movie this year.

Boy, I don’t remember Prince Caspian ever doing THIS in the book, do you?

Thanks to CTMovies editor Mark Moring for passing along this link of pop-gladiator Ben “I’m Prince Caspian!” Barnes… “back in the day” when he was an aspiring pop star with a band called Hyrise.

And, from some of the rumblings I’m hearing, this video has almost as much to do with the novel Prince Caspian as the movie does. Wait, did I just say that in my out-loud voice?

Nonesuch had just announced a bunch of album-release parties at Borders bookstores, where Sam Phillips will perform songs from her new album Don’t Do Anything.

It’s a fairly short list, but perhaps you’ll find that one of these locations is within your reach…

Larry Wall, inventor of PERL.

Any questions for him? Let me know.